Former Hagerstown man sentenced on child porn charge

A former Hagerstown man charged two years ago with possession of child pornography was sentenced in federal court this week to more than 11 years in prison.

Brian Keith Netzer could be looking at an additional 10 years in state prison for an alleged probation violation on a local 2005 sex offense conviction.

Netzer, 45, was arrested on May 4, 2010, after Maryland State Police discovered that child pornography was being transferred between his email accounts, according to a press release from the office of Rod J. Rosenstein, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

Netzer originally faced 15 state charges of possession of child pornography, but that case was placed on the inactive docket after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2011. He had entered into a plea agreement to one count of possession of child pornography earlier in the year, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Friday.

On Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Judge Ellen L. Hollander sentenced Netzer to 135 months in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release, the release said.

“The federal prosecution was in lieu of local charges, but there was no agreement on a violation of probation,” Washington County Assistant State’s Attorney Brett Wilson said Friday. “He still has a violation of probation to face in Hagerstown and I think he has 10 years backup time.”

Netzer was convicted of a second-degree sex offense and sentenced to 14 years in prison with 10 years suspended, according to Washington County Circuit Court records. That offense involved a 13-year-old victim, the U.S. Attorney’s Office press release said.

Netzer already was required to register as a sex offender at the time of his 2010 arrest.

A June 26 violation hearing had been scheduled, but was postponed, court records said.

Now that the federal case has been resolved, Wilson said Netzer will be rescheduled for a violation hearing in Circuit Court. The state will seek 10 years to run consecutively with the federal sentence, Wilson said.

When he was arrested in 2010, a search of three computers in Netzer’s house revealed 368 images and 39 of child pornography, according to the charging documents. Maryland State Police had received tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that emails with embedded child pornography were being sent to Netzer over the Internet, the application for statement of charges said.

Some of the pornography included “images depicting sadistic and masochistic conduct,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office news release said.